Often, vegetarians who travel miss out on local specialties because they are made with meat or fish. Instead, they end up eating in reliable ethnic eateries: Chinese, Italian, Indian, instead of trying the regional foodstuffs. That is exactly what happened to me in Honolulu. So, after several days of living on Chinese food and pineapple, the Paradise Found Café was just that: like finding culinary paradise! The food is just what I was hoping for: a perfect marriage of standard vegetarian staples with traditional and local foods.
Before I get into the food, I just have to describe the surroundings. The café is tucked away in the back of the Celestial Natural Foods store, next to the Haleiwa Post Office. Home-grown construction projects have expanded and divided the space. These are painted, vividly - the photos below say it all. Every inch of wood is covered with fanciful paintings and inscriptions of every hue. There's a narrow counter where you can sit and drink a smoothie or vegetable juice, or settle down in one of the bright red vinyl banquettes that add to the visual cacophony. If you're bored waiting for your order to arrive, you can read the many quotations and notes written on the walls.
We arrived toward the late end of lunchtime and were almost the only customers. This seemed lucky, as the sole employee was both our waitress and chef. I fear the level of service might suffer when there was more than one table and one juice-drinker at the counter to worry about! Yet the food was consistently excellent. We ordered way too much (as is our habit when we've been deprived of our veggies) and still managed to finish every bite.
Our appetizer was a plate of nachos covered with everything you'd expect, black bean chili, and an unexpected addition of raw cucumber that was actually very tasty. For entrees, we ordered a Maui Taro Burger and a Coconut Milk Curry. Both were fantastic. The burger was everything a Hawaiian burger should be: made in Hawaii with delicious chunks of taro and poi inside. Yes, poi! If you've read my Kauai journal, this is the ONLY way I could eat poi without gagging. It came topped with shredded raw beets in addition to the usual stuff. Crunchy and again, interesting. The curry was divine! They take their tofu vegetable scramble and simmer it in a medium spicy curry, then serve it over a huge mound of rice, with a side salad. Of all these delicious treats, the most expensive was the nachos at $6.95 and each plate alone was more than enough for one person, even a large man (as opposed to a small-ish Truly Malin!)
That is all we could force down, but there was so much more on the menu. Nothing was as exotic as what we ordered, but it all seemed wholesome and fresh, like homemade roasted eggplant wraps, or tempeh-mushroom-walnut burgers made from a secret recipe.